I'm going to guess you haven't taken many firefighter qualification examinations. You'd be surprised how much math, and college level math, is on there. Pumping dynamics are all mathematically based and understanding friction loss, pressures required to supply water vertically through a standpipe, and other mathematical concepts actually are relevant to public servants.
As far as philosophy, the bulk of the oral exam I took involved ethical questions and how to respond in various situations that mixed ethics and philosophy. All of those concepts go into the scoring system to differentiate candidates.
If anything, those topics have become more, not less, prevalent in recent years.
I have never taken a firefighters exam.
I was specific in the type of math I mentioned for a reason. My assumption is firefighters need significant knowledge of certain math, engineering, physics and chemistry.
And while, in a general sense, ethics is a branch of philosophy, but I don't think having logic based argument on the meaning of life or a background in the theories of Freud is a job requirement.